Longtime Peanut-Butter-Filled Pretzel Supplier Sues Trader Joe’s

Share

A former business partner of Trader Joe’s is suing the grocer, as well as industrial food giant ConAgra, for alleged breach of contract. The California-based company Maxim Marketing not only claims that it’s acted as the middleman for the entire supply of Trader Joe’s beloved peanut-butter-filled pretzels for the past 25 years, but also that it pioneered the sophisticated technological advances in nut-butter-stuffing technology that enabled the product to become a multimillion dollar industry in the first place. Los Angeles Business Journal reporter Alfred Lee tells NPR that Maxim also alleges that ConAgra has been purchasing the vast majority of all peanut-butter-pretzel-stuffing equipment out there, a move that’s given rise to the “existence of a peanut butter pretzel monopoly,” otherwise known as the most sinister-sounding snack-food cabal of all time. [NPR]